And you know who you are, you beautiful women you. That’s not just me saying it, it’s actual science:
However, it’s not just the propensity of attractive women to have more kids that is pumping beautiful genes into the female pool. The fairer among us also tend to conceive more daughters than sons. In a government-backed study of 15,000 Americans, the most good-looking couples were 26 per cent less likely to have boys. Evolutionary psychologists Alan Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa explain this trend in in their 2007 book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters. In part, the sex of a child is dependent, they argue, on the traits its parents have that are most beneficial to survival. And because being good-looking is a more significant factor in the reproductive success of women than men, it follows that pretty people would have more girls.
OK, now I’m ready for a study that says smarter people are more likely to have boys. Wouldn’t that start a nice fight?
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Véronique – who has 4 very good looking daughters – is glad to be improving the gene pool. It was nothing at all. Really. You are all welcome.
by 
Actually, real science (by which I mean studies published in journals like Science) has already shown that girls are smarter than boys, too. They’re as good at math as boys and better at reading skills.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/may/30/schools.uk1
I also hate to be the stick-in-the-mud that points out that appearance is a multigenic trait dependent on the contributions of both parents, so there is no way to expect a gene (or genes) that would somehow affect the success rate of X-chromosome-carrying sperm (which would make the trait dependent on the father, not the attractive mother, and can probably be ruled out) or the successful birth of a female child would consistently segregate together.
And it looks like their research was discredited anyway:
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/kanazawa.pdf
“In fact, however, this pattern can be explained as a pure
statistical artifact”
Yeah, it sounded a bit dubious, but as someone who’s given birth to only daughters I rather liked the idea 🙂
I love how speculation on the meaning of statistical results passes for science these days. Any story that can fit the numbers passes muster. I wish I got paid to do that! 🙂